Is God Misunderstood?

One of the amazing books I have been reading is The Misunderstood God by Darin Hufford. In the book, he addresses the lack of comprehension in our culture of real love – and shows that we have turned love upside down. This of course has many bad effects on us and our culture, because it causes us to mess up relationships constantly with false expectations and understandings, and even worse, creates an upside down and false understanding of God.

A good example of how this impacts our lives can be seen from this quote:

"I know men who have completely closed their hearts off from women. They don’t trust them as far as they could throw them. I know women who feel this way about men. Their hearts are so miserably untrusting and clogged because of the pain of their past that they are actually fearful of the idea of opening up to a member of the opposite sex. Ironically, men and women who feel this way almost always pray (with their mouths) and ask God to send them a mate. When it doesn’t happen, they lose all trust in God because it appears that He did not answer their prayers. The problem is that God did respond to their prayers, they just don’t remember praying for what they received. God is a heart person. He listens and speaks only to the heart. Our answers from God are in accordance with our hearts’ prayers, not our mouths’."

Here, he talks about one of my favorite subjects – the issue of head vs. heart. There are many reasons for this being a favorite topic of mine, but maybe the most important is the last sentence: "God is a heart person. He listens and speaks ONLY TO THE HEART." (Emphasis added). I also note the unprocessed past pain that drives so many to this state. This is one of the reasons we created theBeyond the Shack course series and focused on forgiveness and freedom from the past, because without these tools, you end up with an inner conflict between your head and heart that prevents you from receiving your desires – well, OK, your head desires, because your heart desires are conflicted.

Lance Wallnau teaches about convergence. Brian Klemmer teaches about throwing out all the rocks in your baggage that are holding you back. Both are talking about eliminating the inner war between your head and your heart, and both teach how to retrain your heart, to remove the lies and false beliefs that have been implanted there through exposure to the fallen world around us. It has been a great joy in my life to learn the techniques they teach that bring convergence! Essentially, it is what St. Paul talks about in Romans: Be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And yes, your heart is part of your mind, the deep part that is connected to your emotions.

Dr. David Eckman taught me a great truth: "Emotions are not an indication of truth, but they are an indication of your understanding of the truth." For example, if you believe you have been forgiven by God for your sins – that they are as far away from you as east from west, and you don’t "feel" anything, you don’t feel an overwhelming joy, gratitude and amazement that you stand clean and pure before God, then this is a very strong indication that your heart DOES NOT BELIEVE IT!

The simple method for retraining your heart is this: write down the truth, and post it on your mirror. Every morning, look yourself in the eye and speak the truth with as much force and emotion as you can muster. The goal is to convince yourself emotionally that it is true. Do this for a month. See what happens. I promise you this: your heart will be changed!